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Phobia - Decades Of Blastphemy

You ever listen to an album and have one thing said by the singer that just seals it for you? I was pretty much already sold on this collection already before the track "Vicious Social Order" came on but listening to Shane dealing with some boring shitty heckler calling the band "pussies" and he comes out his fucking mouth with that shit? GTFO...I was dying.

Anyways lets talk about the record now. One of the things I like about Phobia and have liked about this band for many many years is that even if you can't understand the lyrics on the song they put enough thought and effort into the production and performance of the songs that even though the lyrical message may be lost to speed and chaos, you were able to get the idea that these guys have fucking had it with the systems and ideas that they are writing about. There is no question of intent. They are here to destroy.

Everyone likes to talk about grindcore, especially with the early pioneers, in terms of whether they got lumped in and appreciated more by the crusty lil punkers, the hardcore kids looking for something a little harder or the metal kids that were trying to figure out if they are supposed to bang their heads or commit arson. This band easily found a dedicated following amongst ALL of these groups.

This record, for those of you who don't know, is a collection of tracks that appeared on splits and comps over the years. So I knew going into it that there was nothing truly NEW about this new record...but since I didn't even know about a lot of these releases they were new to me...but even with them being new I knew exactly what I was in for from the first song. Really good, really fast, really fucking angry and I did NOT get it twisted. That is exactly what the record delivered. I will say that due to these tracks being recorded in different places at different times, with different performers and studio workers, the record is very uneven sonically. Tracks go from crystal clear very PRO sounding to muddier more DIY sounding. The volume levels from track to track at times can be jarring (I'm looking at you "Depraved") but even in spite of that the record flows really well. I probably listened to it 8 times through on my ride home from work last night and it definitely works as an album and not just a compilation of random tracks.

Do you already like Phobia? Probably. Will this change your mind from whatever your feelings are about the band? Probably not. Is it worth having? 100% This is a great record that captures a band who is arguably the best at what they do, at various stages of their career. It is an easy, fast listen with very few drawbacks unless you care about homogenous sounding recordings or understandable vocals...and if you really care about that then your pussy emo ass probably doesn't like grindcore that much anyway and you can probably fuck right off.

EDIT: I was just online looking for label info for this record and I get the impression that the download I got for the review only features a small fraction of the music actually included on this (apparently) four record set...I bet there are a lot more than the 10 songs I got and I would probably love all of those too.